Group Furniture in Living Room

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 735, 7 August 1929, Page 14

Group Furniture in Living Room

NO CLUTTERING UP MAKE ROOM LIVABLE Living rooms should be made livable. Cluttering them up with family keepsakes is a doubtful step. An interesting room must certainly have a few interesting things and methods of decoration. If an interesting thing is ugly it must be overpoweringly worth-while in associations and personality to compensate for its lack of beauty. It is difficult to imagine a thoroughly ugly room being sufficiently “interesting” to atone for its artistic vagrancy. Furniture grouping is an excellent chart for producing dignity and cosiness. The fireplace is always an ideal place for a ‘’group” of comfortable furniture. An occasional small table beside a reading chair with a lamp nearby is an old method, but may be made ever new in each specific instance. A good deal is said about “colour schemes,” and “matching everjThing in the room to a trio of colours in a single vase or picture.” Yet, if we aren't too much annoyed by the technicalities and sometimes questionable “extremes” of “the artists,” we may learn much from their methods. Often three colours are all that is needed in a room—even a big room. If these colours can be found in some single ornament, it simply means that ready-made we have a workable colour chart, which, if it produces harmony in the single ornament, will produce harmony in the room as a whole. The chief difficulty in hodge-podgy colours and furniture is that they will in a month or a year or five years become tiresome. The living room should not prove a bore to the eye or the nerves—or the spine! Occasional rearrangement of furniture and ornaments should be sufficient to arrest any possible symptoms of weariness jf the initial work has been sensibly done. A tiresome room is not n good investment. Formal neutral-toned walls need cheery, warm upholstery, drapes and sofa pillows. fi'arm or figured walls demand simplicity in furnishings.

NO SCRUBBING

WATER IS BAD FOR ANY LINOLEUM CORRECT CLEANING Good, inlaid linoleum does not want scrubbing. In point of fact, water is bad for it, except at rare intervals. If it is thoroughly cleaned with soap and water once in three months, the only other care necessary is the thorough polishing of the linoleum once a week. Care should be taken to remove every particle of polish with a clean, soft duster, and if there is a quantity of linoleum iu the house it is a wise investment to purchase one of the many types of patent polishers, with adjustable handles, which are on the market. If a good polishing cream is used the lustre comes up again and agaiu with rubbing. Indeed, a higher and more brilliant polish results from the use ot a small quantity of cream than from a large and over-generous application. It is a waste of energy and a source of danger to polish linoleum when it is covered with rugs or mats. People are liable to slip if the surface under the mats is highly polished. These portions of the linoleum should be merely scrubbed, with the others, to keep them clean and dust-free. When laying down new linoleums find time to explore the 6hops for the latest style. Self-colours in particular can be obtained in all manner of soft and attractive shades —so many that it is possible to purchase a linoleum to “match” any kind of decorative scheme in any room. A “surround” of plain, dark linoleum in rooms where small carpets are laid is much more effective and hygienic than the old practice of varnishing or staining the floor-boards.

HANGING PICTURES

MANY MISTAKES MADE The symmetry of rooms is more often upset by the presence of too many or badly hung, badly framed, ill-asosrted pictures, than by anything else in the realm of furnishing and decoration. The presence of too many pictures defeats the very idea of their existence (says a writer in “Homes and Gardens”).. The eye takes in a blur of frames hut sees nothing else. Even where restraint has been exercised in the number of pictures in a room, their effect may be marred by the manner in which they are hung. The single picture-hook system results in a triangle of wire or cord standing out against the wall. A far better method, and one far pleasanter to the eye, where large or heavy pictures are concerned, is to use light cliaiu or appropriate wire and to suspend them from two hooks, the chain or wire thus following the vertical line of both wall and pictureframe. Pictures should be hung at comfortable eve-level for a person of average height, standing: and where two or more are hung close together the tops of the frames should be level. Small pictures may be hung from hooks or pins in the wall behind them, without exhibiting auy wire or cord whatever. This is a very simple and satisfactory way, especially in a small room.

inc cti diiipcis oi me iveiidissancc were strangely inconsistent. While in practice constantly violating the principles of classic design they were in theory ardently advocating these principles.—Charles H. Moore.